The Pirates haven’t done much so far in the offseason, but the defending NL champion Cardinals – who have pretty much established themselves as the “team to beat” for the Bucs (and the NLC) – have already gone to work and addressed their primary concerns for the winter.

The Cards will no longer have to suffer through Pete Kozma and Daniel Descalso playing shortstop – easily their biggest weakness this season. They signed free agent Jhonny Peralta to a giant four year, $52 million deal. That probably isn’t great value and is something of a risk for a 31 year old who is likely to decline – especially on defense – but for now, it’s a large upgrade. Peralta is a pretty solid bat for a shortstop, and while the eye test may not consider him a great defender, he posts a solid UZR. He’s coming off a 50 game suspension as part of the Biogenesis mess this year, but he came back strong in the playoffs for Detroit. Feel free to chuckle the next time you hear about the high and mighty “Cardinal Way” now that they’ve plugged a hole in free agency by rewarding a known PED user with a $50M+ contract, but that’s about the only negative here for St. Louis. They might be overpaying him, but they have the funds to take that risk…and despite the high price they paid, he won’t cost a draft pick since the Tigers didn’t make him a qualifying offer. St. Louis was also able to address its big need without giving up any of their big prospects.

The Cards also shipped postseason hero David Freese to Los Angeles for outfielder Peter Bourjos. On offense, that’s roughly an even swap (Freese was incredible in the 2011 WS and his homer started the scoring in the Bucs’ Game 5 loss this year, but for the most part he hasn’t been too good with the bat). Bourjos is an excellent center fielder, though, and that helps solve another one of St. Louis’ few issues – outfield defense. Jon Jay was dreadful in center, and Bourjos will cover a lot more ground.

The good news for the Bucs is that Carlos Beltran is a free agent this year, and the Cards don’t appear likely to bring him back. They will get a compensation draft pick if/when he signs elsewhere, though, and as always with the Cardinals, they’ve got a stud prospect ready to replace him.

OK, all this stuff about the Cardinals…how about Pirates news? OK, well, they made a call to Lance Berkman but he’s leaning towards retirement. Berkman certainly doesn’t seem like a fit for the Bucs anyway given his age and likelihood of being a defensive liability…plus I don’t think “making a call” really qualifies as news (I’m sure the Pirates have “made a call” on almost every free agent by now), but there you have it. Still tons of time, but that’s all we have so far.

Andrew McCutchen presented at the AMA’s on Sunday night. It was a very brief appearance, but still…a Pittsburgh Pirate, spotlighted as part of something like this…could you even imagine that a few years ago? Cutch is the man.

Pirates single-game tickets for 2014 go on sale on Friday. They also released the promo schedule – it’s basically T-shirts on Fridays, fireworks/Skyblasts on Saturdays, and Kids Days on Sundays. There will be McCutchen and Pedro Alvarez bobblehead nights. The new prices are also up – most Saturday games and a few other big ones will cost the most, and most Friday games will cost a bit more than the rest.